out for themselves and apply their own style is very important for people . Autonomy is one of the three main drivers of human motivation .
2 . STOP DEMOTIVATING AND START ' DEHASSLING .'
The best managers are less concerned about motivating their people and more concerned about not demotivating them .
The No . 1 demotivator for talented people is having to put up with bozos , as Steve Jobs would call them . Nothing is more frustrating for " A " players than having to work with " B " and " C " players who slow them down and suck their energy . In that sense , “ The best thing you can do for employees — a perk better than foosball or free sushi — is hire only ‘ A ’ players to work alongside them . Excellent colleagues trump everything else ,” explains Patty McCord , former chief talent officer at Netflix , in a recent Harvard Business Review article . Fixing people issues for your team can also mean “ firing ” a client . Firing such clients can gain managers huge respect internally . The negative financial impact is usually counteracted by the immediate rise in the spirits and productivity of your team .
1 . HELP PEOPLE PLAY TO THEIR STRENGTHS .
Finding employees ’ strengths and focusing on those assets is the most powerful management tool we can suggest . And it goes hand in hand with dehassling a person ’ s job . Embracing strengths-based management practices will bring you more fulfilled , happier , and engaged employees who will lift themselves and your organization to new levels of energy and performance . For more information on successfully scaling your business , check out Verne Harnish ’ s book , “ Scaling Up : Why a Few Companies Make It , and the Rest Don ’ t .”
BIOGRAPHY
Verne Harnish is the founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs ' Organization ( EO ), with over 13,000 members worldwide , and has chaired the EO ' s premiere CEO program , the " Birthing of Giants ," for 15 years . Founder and CEO of Scaling Up , a global executive education and coaching company with over 200 coaching partners on six continents , Verne has spent the past three decades helping companies scale up .
The " Growth Guy " syndicated columnist , he ' s the author of “ Scaling Up ( Rockefeller Habits 2.0 ),” “ Mastering the Rockefeller Habits ,” and , along with the editors of Fortune , “ The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time ,” for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword . Verne also chairs biannual Scale Up Summits and serves on several boards , including chairman of The Riordan Clinic and the newly launched Geoversity . n
What ultimately sets great managers apart from the merely good ones is that they help their people play to their strengths . A strength isn ’ t just something you ’ re good at ; it literally gives you strength and gives you energy . In turn , a weakness is something that , though you may be good at it , drains the life out of you .
Thus , a key function of great managers is helping individual employees refocus and prune their jobs over time , so they focus more on activities that give them strength and less on activities that make them weak . The companies that minimize draining tasks will have a more energized team .
Lois Melbourne , CEO of Texas-based Aquire , has taken a page from strengths guru Marcus Buckingham . Instead of hiring more ( and extremely difficult-to-find ) programmers to keep up with the rapid growth of her HR software firm , she ’ s focused on making her existing programmers happier and more energized .
To do this , Buckingham suggests taking a couple weeks to document all the activities you either love or loathe . This is precisely what Melbourne has her programmers do regularly . She wants to know all of the activities that drain their energy and keep them away from their primary strength : programming . She then eliminates the activities no one should have to do ( they creep into every job ) and uses the remaining list to create a job scorecard for a new position to be filled by someone who loves to do what others hate . The result is happier , more productive , and loyal programmers .
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